Biography
A Maryknoll priest and Vietnam veteran, Bourgeois became a leading critic of U.S. military policy in Latin America and founded School of the Americas Watch. His activism relied heavily on repeated nonviolent civil disobedience aimed at military institutions—especially protests connected to Fort Benning, where the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas operated.
Those protests led to multiple arrests and prison terms. In 1983, he was convicted on trespassing and impersonation charges linked to an anti‑SOA action and served 18 months in federal prison; he was arrested again in subsequent protests as well. Earlier, he had also been arrested and deported from Bolivia in 1975 after organizing alongside campesino and labor movements.
A former Catholic priest and longtime human-rights campaigner, Bourgeois is best known for founding School of the Americas Watch and building a sustained movement to close School of the Americas at Fort Benning. His activism has centered on U.S. policy in Latin America and the consequences of military training and counterinsurgency doctrine for civilians; he became a prominent organizer of large annual demonstrations as well as smaller acts of civil disobedience that repeatedly led to arrest on trespass or unlawful-entry charges.
His history of arrest connected to political activism predates that campaign. While working with poor communities in Bolivia, he was arrested during the dictatorship of Hugo Banzer and later deported; he also faced arrest in the United States in connection with actions aimed at highlighting violence and repression linked to conflicts in places such as El Salvador.
